Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.
It's a relationship between equals.
Only when we know our own darkness well
can we be present with the darkness of others.
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron
Related topics: Inspirational Life Human-Nature Psychology Buddhist Compassion
The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people
is that they trigger confusion in us
that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.
To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves,
we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
- Pema Chodron
At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
- Pema Chodron
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron
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To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake
is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
- Pema Chodron
Abandon hope.
- Pema Chodron
People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou
If we have no peace,
it is because we have forgotten
that we belong to each other.
- Mother Teresa
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Love is the absence of judgment.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Life is an exciting business,
and most exciting when it is lived for others.
- Helen Keller
Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
- written on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor
The best way to cheer yourself
is to try to cheer someone else up.
- Mark Twain
You cannot do a kindness too soon,
for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures
is not to hate them,
but to be indifferent to them:
that's the essence of inhumanity.
- George Bernard Shaw
You may call God love, you may call God goodness.
But the best name for God is compassion.
- Meister Eckhart
One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu
For some of us, the world appears to provide
only a fixed quantity of each resource -
a limited amount of food, of money,
of love, of success, of appreciation.
For others, life is unlimited.
Their world expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that they contribute.
In this world-view, money that is spent
or given away returns multiplied.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need
but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
- 1 John 3:17
Compassion is to be valued more than law.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A generous heart, kind speech,
and a life of service and compassion
are the things which renew humanity.
- The Buddha
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Compassion is the ultimate value in life.
Service is the ultimate action.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Compassion is the basis of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
- Lao Tzu
I Receive ALL of Life with Thanksgiving -
I have gratitude for EVERYTHING
that has ever occurred to bring me to this moment.
I give thanks for the joys and the sufferings,
the moments of peace and the flashes of anger,
the compassion and the indifference,
the roar of my courage and the cold sweat of my fear.
I accept gratefully the entirety of my past and my present life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Our compassion and acts of selflessness
take us to the deeper truths.
- Amma
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I teach one thing and one only:
that is, suffering and the end of suffering.
- The Buddha
No one has ever become poor by giving.
- Anne Frank
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor.
Do you know your next door neighbor?
- Mother Teresa
When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves
and our own self-preservation,
we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
- Joseph Campbell
With courage, you will dare to take risks,
have the strength to be compassionate,
and the wisdom to be humble.
Courage is the foundation of integrity.
- Keshavan Nair
Be kind whenever possible; and it is always possible.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
No one is to be called an enemy,
all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm.
You have no enemy except yourselves.
- St. Francis of Assisi
We must use time wisely and forever realize
that the time is always ripe to do right.
- Nelson Mandela
The brightest stars are those who
shine for the benefit of others.
- Anonymous
I have found that among its other benefits,
giving liberates the soul of the giver.
- Maya Angelou
A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer
Nobody cares how much you know,
until they know how much you care.
- attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, among others,
but probably earlier and anonymous
We can live without religion and meditation,
but we cannot survive without human affection.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
If in our daily life we can smile,
if we can be peaceful and happy,
not only we, but everyone will profit from it.
This is the most basic kind of peace work.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Great people are those who make others feel
that they, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
- Albert Einstein
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.
- Thomas Jefferson
When I am getting ready to reason with a man,
I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself
and what I am going to say
and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
- Abraham Lincoln
The vast Cathedral of Your Being
becomes sanctuary for all creation
as you celebrate the universal sacraments
of compassion and joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Let us touch the dying, the poor,
the lonely and the unwanted
according to the graces we have received
and let us not be ashamed
or slow to do the humble work.
- Mother Teresa
If there is anything that a man can do well,
I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
- Abraham Lincoln
Kindness is better than piety.
- Yiddish Proverb
We really have to understand the person we want to love.
If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
- Albert Schweitzer
The happiness of one's own heart alone
cannot satisfy the soul;
one must try to include,
as necessary to one's own happiness,
the happiness of others.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
We cause ourselves untold misery whenever we believe
others to be imperfect and try to change them.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The purpose of human life is to serve,
and to show compassion and the will to help others.
- Albert Schweitzer
Wherever there is a human being,
there is an opportunity for a kindness.
- Seneca
Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem,
but you sow the seeds for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Nurturing is not complex.
It's simply being tuned in to the thing or person before you
and offering small gestures toward what it needs at that time.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
We are formed and molded by our thoughts.
Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts
give joy when they speak or act.
Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.
- The Buddha
You can give without loving,
but you can never love without giving.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
Where there is charity and wisdom,
there is neither fear nor ignorance.
- St. Francis of Assisi
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
- Joseph Joubert
When we do the best that we can,
we never know what miracle is wrought in our life,
or in the life of another.
- Helen Keller
Once you know yourself as a genuine seeker,
and when your own inner chamber is quite enlightened,
then comes the natural unfoldment of pure love and compassion
and a genuine desire to serve others.
- Rod Stryker
Be gentle first with yourself -
if you wish to be gentle with others.
- Lama Yeshe
What do we live for, if it is not
to make life less difficult for each other?
- George Eliot
Whosoever is spared personal pain
must feel himself called
to help in diminishing the pain of others.
We must all carry our share of
the misery which lies upon the world.
- Albert Schweitzer
If you wish to experience peace,
provide peace for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.
And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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